


In the Great Wide Somewhere

by hollyanneg



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Beauty and the Beast Fusion, M/M, Modern Setting, Slow Burn, Tetris battles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:08:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28142889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollyanneg/pseuds/hollyanneg
Summary: a rose, a Beast, a raven, a magical forest, and a plucky bookworm who might be the only person who can break the curse...
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 14
Kudos: 75
Collections: Pynch Secret Santa 2020





	In the Great Wide Somewhere

**Author's Note:**

  * For [squash1-squash2](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=squash1-squash2).



> Chainsaw: Be our guest!  
> Adam, channeling Simone from The Good Place: I'm in a coma and none of this is real.

It starts with a phone call. Fortunately, Adam’s just bought himself a phone, finally, after years without. Fortunately, Adam has just gotten off work, and thus is able to answer.

Gansey is on the other end, frantic, talking too fast. “Adam—we need help—we’re lost in the woods and there’s this creature, this mon—” There’s a roar somewhere behind Gansey that sounds so unnatural that Adam stops dead on the sidewalk between the garage and his apartment.

“Gansey,” he says. “Are you all right?” The roar would suggest otherwise.

“We’re alive,” says Gansey. “He hasn’t done anything to us yet.”

That roar again.

The hairs are prickling on the back of Adam’s neck. “What on earth is going on?” he asks, truly scared.

“He let us walk to the edge of the woods to get a signal so we could call you,” Gansey says. Which doesn’t really answer the question.

“Who? Who are you with?” Adam’s never really experienced Gansey quite like this, manic and very clearly frightened.

“Blue,” says Gansey. He’s still talking so fast the words slur together. “She and I got lost, and we met—well, it’s hard to explain, but he said he might let us go, he’d consider it, if someone made it worth his while. He won’t tell us what he wants, but could you bring something? Money, maybe?” There’s another strange, loud sound on Gansey’s end, but he keeps talking. “Anything you can think of that would be valuable. Go to Monmouth and take what you can find. I’ll pay you back for anything that’s yours.”

Even now, Adam is incapable of reacting normally to any conversation with Gansey that involves money. He feels the usual resentment as soon as the words are spoken. But now’s not the time for that. His friend is usually rational enough, so something very strange is happening, and Adam needs to help him. “I don’t understand,” he says. “Someone’s kidnapped you?”

“More or less,” says Gansey. “Please, will you bring anything you can think of and come out here? I’ll send you our GPS coordinates.”

Adam says yes. Of course he does.

They hang up, and he sprints the rest of the way to his apartment. He doesn’t have anything valuable except the new phone and his meager wages, but he finds the spare key Gansey gave him and rushes off to Gansey’s place instead. There’s no money lying around, but there is a checkbook in Gansey’s desk drawer. He takes that, and Gansey’s laptop, and a gaming console. He isn’t sure what else to try. The designer shoes? The strange modern art? The TV that’s nearly too big to carry?

In the end, he throws all that and more—anything that will fit—into the back of his tiny, crappy car. He doesn’t want to show up there without the one thing the kidnapper might want, so he’s not leaving anything behind.

He drives to the location Gansey sent him. At first, he goes faster than he should, worried for his friends’ safety. Eventually, he has to slow down, because his map app is taking him up winding, narrow roads, into the mountains outside of Henrietta. At some point, he realizes he’s been driving for more than an hour. He hopes they’re all right—that the kidnapper hasn’t turned violent. And then he asks himself how on earth they got kidnapped and ransomed way out here. Is the perpetrator some mountain hermit? Some fugitive hiding in the woods? Some deranged moonshiner whose still they stumbled upon?

When the app says “you’ve arrived at your destination!” he’s still in the middle of nowhere. There’s nothing this far out except trees and undergrowth and unseen animals. He pulls off the gravel road he’s been on for the past fifteen minutes, gets out of the car, and looks around. He doesn’t see any trace of his friends. He cups his hand around his mouth and starts shouting both their names. Eventually, he hears a far-off voice replying to him. He can’t tell if it’s them or not. He locks his car and starts walking towards the voice anyway.

Before he finds his friends, he finds the Beast.

It’s almost a wolf, but not quite. It’s too big, for one thing. It would tower over Adam if it stood on two legs. Its ears are flattened with anger; its teeth are bared; it’s glaring at him with the iciest blue eyes he’s ever seen on an animal.

He stops dead. He has no idea what to do. He can’t outrun this thing, whatever it is.

Before he can think of any alternative, the Beast growls at him, “Are you Adam?”

That’s when he finally wonders if he’s dreaming. The stress of too much work and not enough sleep have caught up with him. He dreamed—or hallucinated—the phone call from Gansey, the long drive, the impossible animal, and the conversation it has just initiated.

But he says, “Yes.”

The Beast rolls its eyes. “Thank fucking God,” it says. “Took you long enough. Your friends are this way.”

He follows. What else can he do? It’s a dream; he’ll wake up eventually.

They walk another five minutes deeper into the woods. It’s a beautiful place, still and quiet. It feels so much cooler here, on a mountain under the trees, than it did down in Henrietta’s valley. The thick canopy above his head is the vivid green of midsummer. The leaves that carpet the ground crackle under his feet and emanate an earthy smell. He focuses on all these things to avoid looking directly at the Beast, who occasionally glances back to see he’s still there.

He hears Gansey and Blue before he sees them. He recognizes the tones of their voices even if he can’t tell what they’re saying.

The Beast stops at a particularly large tree, the kind you’d never be able to wrap your arms all the way around. Gansey and Blue are on the other side, tied up with some shimmery ropes that look more like cobwebs than anything else. They look up at him with relief. Gansey says, “Adam, thank god you’re here.”

“I came as quick as I could,” he says.

“Did you bring anything?” Blue asks. She juts out her chin at the Beast and says, “It’s time for you to tell us what you want.”

If—and it’s a big if—this is all real, Adam can’t imagine this creature having any use for the things he brought.

If it’s all a dream, it’s incredibly vivid.

He tells them, “I brought a ton of stuff. It’s all in my car.”

“Wait,” says the Beast. “We walked all this way only to go back because the stuff is in your car? Which looks like a piece of shit, by the way.”

“What the hell do you know about cars?” Adam asks. This conversation is absurd, so he doesn’t wait for an answer. “I wouldn’t have given you anything before seeing they were all right anyway.”

The Beast has this look on his face—like if he were a human he’d be leaning against one of the trees, picking at his cuticles, the picture of utter boredom and disdain. Adam glares at him.

“Are you all right?” he asks Gansey and Blue. “Has he hurt you?”

“Just scared the crap out of us,” says Blue.

“You had it coming,” the Beast says.

“We didn’t!” She’d be tackling the Beast by now if she weren’t tied up.

“You were trespassing.” The Beast counts on one of his paws like a person. “You stole from me. And then you wouldn’t give it back.”

“Since when does the forest belong to you?” she shoots back. “I’m pretty sure this is a state park.”

“This part of the forest has always belonged to my family,” he says seriously.

Adam just wants to get to the point. “What did they steal? If they give it back, will you let them go?” He can’t believe he’s negotiating between his friends and a dream-monster.

“No,” says the Beast, “it’s already dead.”

“They killed something?” Adam asks skeptically. That’s even harder to imagine than his friends “stealing.”

“A rose,” says Blue. “Which would’ve withered in a week or two anyway.”

“That doesn’t give you the right to take something that isn’t yours,” the Beast snaps.

It’s all too much. Adam holds up both hands to shut them up. “Okay, you won’t take back the rose—which I’m sure they’re sorry for.” He shoots Blue a look—a _please apologize so we can go_ look. “If you just tell us what you want in exchange, we’ll be out of your hair.” He smiles when he thinks about how much hair this creature has. It catches him and glares.

"What’s so funny?” When no one answers, he says, “What did you bring?”

Adam lists everything—the checkbook, the laptop, the console, the shoes, the painting, the TV, and his own phone—at which point Gansey chimes in with, “Oh, you’re welcome to my phone as well!”

The Beast pauses just long enough to increase the suspense. _This thing is a drama queen,_ Adam thinks.

“I don’t want any of that shit,” it says. “What would I do with it out here? Do you see any stores? Any electrical outlets?”

“The shoes?” Adam reminds him. “The painting?”

“Sure, I’ll hang the painting on one of my many walls.” The Beast gestures around him at the trees. “And I’m sure the shoes will be just my size.” He lifts up a paw.

Adam’s had enough. “What the hell did you think humans would have to offer you? Just _tell us what you want!”_

The Beast looks him up and down. “I’ll make you a deal,” it says.

“You’d better,” Adam says, “because I’m not leaving without my friends.”

“You don’t have to leave at all,” the Beast says. They’re friendly words, but delivered in an ominously serious tone. “I’ll trade your friends for you.”

“No,” says Blue immediately.

Gansey agrees with her. “Absolutely not.”

They continue to protest and to argue with the Beast, but Adam isn’t listening anymore. He’s rapidly weighing his options. Better one person held hostage than two. He trusts himself to be able to escape eventually. Even if he doesn’t, he has no family to miss him. They do.

Besides, it’s all a dream. Right? It would be over soon.

“Deal,” he tells the Beast.

“Adam, _no,_ ” Gansey says firmly. “You are not going to sacrifice yourself for us.”

“Yes I am,” says Adam. He’s just as resolute.

“You can’t,” says Blue. “This is insane. We’ll think of literally anything else—”

But the Beast is already untying them, and as soon as the wispy ropes have come off Blue and Gansey, they drift over to Adam all on their own, wrapping themselves around him. He’s immobilized immediately.

Adam drops his car keys on the ground, because he can’t do anything else. “One of you take my car back. It’s got all your stuff in it.”

They’re both frozen in horror, but they’re realizing there’s nothing they can do. He’s tied up, and the Beast—which could easily kill them all—is still hovering.

So Gansey just says, “We’re coming back for you. We will get you out of here. We’ll figure something out.”

The Beast says, “Good luck with that.” He snaps his teeth at them, which is enough to get them moving again.

“Hang in there,” Gansey says as a goodbye. “We’ll be back soon.”

The Beast follows them out of the forest, probably to make sure they actually go. Adam is alone for a little while. He manages to sit down where Blue and Gansey had been—although he has to fall over first to get there.

It’s probably half an hour before the Beast comes back. By then, Adam has retreated into himself completely, so he doesn’t watch the Beast pace back and forth in front of him, swishing its tail like a cat.

Eventually it says, “You can call me Ronan.”

Adam’s voice sounds like it’s coming from very far away. “I didn’t ask.”

The Beast—Ronan—bares its teeth at him again. It looks distinctly sarcastic. But he goes on. “This is the center of my territory. It extends five miles in every direction from here. Don’t ever walk east of here, though. If you do, you’re fucked.”

“I can’t walk anywhere,” Adam points out, though he still isn’t really there.

“I’ll untie you if you promise not to run away.”

He isn’t going to promise that, so he doesn’t say anything.

The Beast huffs. “Fucking fine, be petty. I’m leaving.”

He doesn’t come back again all night, but just as Adam finally returns to reality enough to realize he’s hungry, a raven appears out of nowhere carrying a bag. It’s reminiscent of a stork delivering a baby, but the Edgar Allan Poe version of that.

It lands right in front of him and sets the bag at his feet. When he doesn’t take it right away, the raven nudges it a little closer to him.

“Is this for me?” Adam asks the bird, because talking to a bird is no stranger than the rest of this.

The raven actually nods.

So Adam leans over awkwardly—because he’s still tied up—and takes it. That’s when he notices the logo. “This is... McDonald’s?”

The raven doesn’t respond to that, just flies off.

The burger and fries in the bag have gotten a little cold, but Adam doesn’t care. He devours them.

Once night falls—late, since it’s midsummer—he tips himself over to lie down. He makes himself as comfortable as he can on a bed of leaves, and after a while, falls asleep.

He would’ve expected to wake up back in his normal bed in his little apartment, but he doesn’t. That’s what makes him accept, finally, that this isn’t a dream. He’s still in the forest in the middle of nowhere, tied up with cobwebs.

He knows that Gansey and Blue have both personally experienced magic. Gansey is certain that a dead Welsh king brought him back to life once. Blue’s family is psychic, and she’s seen a spirit before, although she’ll never say who or when it was.

He’s been willing to believe in these things, because he trusts his friends. He’s willing to believe in his own psychic powers, which he only recently learned about. He doesn’t believe that Gansey’s king is hidden somewhere in Virginia waiting to be re-awoken. He hasn’t ever really believed in any kind of magic other than what he and his friends have personally witnessed. But apparently other kinds do exist. The impossible wolf-creature and the McDonald’s delivery raven and these strange, webby restraints are definitely all magical.

He personally witnesses more magic mid-morning, when a little girl emerges from behind a tree. He’s caught on her raggedy sweater, her skull cap, and her enormous, dark eyes, so it takes him a minute to notice her hooves. She’s half goat. She comes up to him slowly, tentatively. She looks scared, so he tries to look as non-threatening as possible. He’s not going to be the one to scare a child, even a magical one.

When she’s a little closer, she starts talking to him in a language that sounds a little like Latin but isn’t. Could it be... Italian or Romanian or something? He has no idea, so he just shakes his head at her. She switches to English. “You’ll give me your watch,” she says.

“What?” No, he won’t. The last thing he wants to do is give up his only way of marking how long he’s been here.

“In the other world, you give it to me,” she says.

He has no idea what this means.

She produces something out from under her huge sweater and holds it up. “This one is yours,” she says.

It looks a hell of a lot fancier than his. It’s shiny and golden, for starters.

She hands it to him, and he compares it to his own. The time on each is the same.

All right, then. “You want my watch?” he asks, just to be sure. She nods. He can still hardly move, so he holds his arm out to her. She takes his watch off it and puts it on her own wrist. She has to pull the strap much tighter than he did. She’s so tiny.

She comes closer to him and starts to mess with his bindings. In a moment, they’re floating away, the way they floated off Blue and Gansey. He’s thrilled, but then she says, “You can’t go.” She takes the new watch from him and puts it on his wrist, then tugs his hand to make him stand up. “Come,” she says.

She leads him through the woods for a few minutes. Nothing’s amiss. It’s sunny, and he hears birdsong. He doesn’t see the Beast anywhere.

In a moment, though, he sees a structure—a wooden cabin that looks like it’s probably been here for decades. The little girl walks straight up to it and steps inside.

It looks like it could fall down at any moment. It can’t be safe. He doesn’t want to go inside, but she did, and he feels a little responsible for her. So he goes in.

Inside, it’s clear that someone actually lives here. It’s well-furnished and cozy, although, as the Beast had pointed out, there doesn’t seem to be any electricity. The little girl takes his hand again and leads him out of what seems to be the main living area, into a narrow room with no furnishings except a twin-sized bed. “For you,” she says. “To sleep.”

It looks a lot more comfortable than the ground. But—“I’m not sleepy,” he says.

“For later,” she tells him. Then, “You can walk, but you can’t leave,” which doesn’t sound like a command in her childish voice, but it may be. Finally, she says, “Kerah will be nice.” He can’t decipher that, and she turns and leaves before he can ask what it means.

He goes back outside and relieves himself—because it’s been way too long—then starts walking determinedly in the direction he’s pretty sure he came from yesterday. He’s not going to emerge at the same spot, but as long as he reaches the road, he can hitch a ride back to Henrietta. He’d call someone, except he stupidly left his phone in his car, but he wouldn’t have had any signal in the woods anyway.

He walks for ten minutes or so—there’s no one around to stop him—and then suddenly, something sends him flying. He lands hard on his back and lies there bewildered for a minute. He hadn’t run into anything—had he? There’d been nothing in front of him. It was like he’d hit a force field.

 _Oh_ —could that be what the little girl meant? _You can walk, but you can’t leave?_ Had the Beast trapped him here somehow? If so, this force field could clearly be disarmed, because Gansey and Blue had left successfully.

Still flat on his back, he swears to himself he’ll find a way to disable it.

This is when the Beast chooses to reappear. He hears footsteps, and then its terrifying face is leering over him. “What’d you do that for?” the Beast says. “Did you really think you could just walk out of here?”

He doesn’t deign to answer that.

"Get up,” says the Beast. “You’re going to have lunch with me.”

He definitely isn’t. “I don’t take orders,” he says.

The Beast doesn’t have eyebrows, but he manages to look quizzical anyway. “You don’t take orders from the person who has you prisoner?”

Adam immediately hates the word prisoner applied to himself. He was supposed to be free by now. Finally out of high school, out of the trailer...

“No,” he says. “And you aren’t a person.”

The Beast scowls at him. “What do you know about it?”

He does seem quite human for a wolf-type-thing.

When he sees Adam isn’t going to move, he snarls, “You eat with me or you don’t eat at all.”

“I’ll forage for berries,” Adam says sarcastically.

The Beast makes a noise that would probably be a laugh if it came from a human. He walks away and leaves Adam in peace.

As it turns out, Adam has no idea which berries are safe to eat and which aren’t. Nature survival skills aren’t the kind he knows. He finds a walnut tree, but they aren’t ripe yet. He finds a sassafras tree—he knows what it is because there was one by his high school that Gansey pointed out once. He stares at it for a while, debating with himself, because he’s pretty sure you can eat that, but not 100%. He has a vague notion that Blue’s family makes tea from it.

In the end, he eats sassafras leaves for lunch. They taste like nothing.

He wanders around the forest for hours, and twice more, hits a force field that knocks him down and leaves him breathless. At least now he’s getting a sense for how far he can safely go. But he isn’t entirely sure where he started, or where he is now. He hasn’t seen the cabin again. The more he walks, the more he feels disoriented, so eventually he has to stop.

When the sun is low in the sky, his stomach is growling loud enough to drown out the birds. He’s used to hunger pains, but it’s been a while since he’s lacked the power to do anything about it. He’s trying to decide what to do—finding the cabin again seems like his best bet—when suddenly, the raven from the night before reappears. This time it’s carrying an entire picnic basket. Adam’s not sure how that’s physically possible. Nevertheless, the raven sets it down gently on the ground at Adam’s feet. “Thank you,” he says. He hadn’t the night before.

Inside is a Subway sandwich and three bags of chips. Nothing has ever looked more beautiful to him. There’s also a bottle of coke, a bottle of water, a picnic blanket, napkins, and utensils. The bird watches him unpack it all. This is still somehow shocking to Adam even after the events of the past two days. How did the bird procure all this?

It stays longer than before. It watches him eat. When it hops a little closer, he offers it a chip. It seems like the least he can do. But the raven declines.

Eventually, it flies off, having gotten bored, he guesses. It leaves him the basket and everything else.

He sleeps where he is, this time lying on his picnic blanket. It’s marginally more comfortable than the night before, because there aren’t any leaves poking into him. The day and the night have been warm and humid, a typical Virginia summer, so he takes off his t-shirt and the coveralls he’s still wearing from the garage and uses them as a pillow.

In the morning, he wakes up, and the Beast is sitting next to him, staring.

Adam jumps, startled, and crosses his arms cover his bare chest. The Beast looks away then, as if to be polite. Adam is horrified anyway. “Were you watching me sleep?” he asks.

The Beast doesn’t answer that—maybe the answer is too obvious. Or maybe it—he?—is embarrassed. He says instead, “I dunno if you should be eating anything off the trees here. They aren’t normal trees, even if they look like it.”

So has he--? “So were you watching me all day yesterday as well?” Adam asks.

“It’s my forest,” says the Beast. “I can do what I want.”

There’s so much Adam wants to say—that just because you can doesn’t mean you should, that this forest actually belongs to the State of Virginia as Blue had pointed out, etc.—but he reverts to an earlier point. “Am I just supposed to starve, then?”

The Beast rolls his eyes. “You’re not going to starve. I got you dinner, didn’t I?”

“That was you?” Now that’s interesting. “You can shapeshift into a bird?”

“No,” says the Beast, taking the question seriously. “That’s my pet raven, Chainsaw.”

Of course it is. Curiouser and curiouser. Adam hates it in this particular Wonderland. Again, where to start with processing that? “How do you know about chainsaws? How did you get me McDonald’s and Subway way out here? Doesn’t a creature like you _eat_ birds?”

The Beast stares at him. The expression looks distinctly angry. “The answer to all those questions is I’m not a _creature_. I’m a human. Well, I used to be.”

Adam turns that over in his head for a minute. “That actually doesn’t answer the food question,” he says.

“You’re a real fucking piece of work,” the Beast says, but it sounds like maybe he enjoys that. “I have my ways, okay? Everything here is magical. You really wanna quibble about where your Big Mac came from?”

Adam decides to lean into this. He puts his shirt back on because he doesn’t really want anyone, even this weirdo, looking at his scrawny, scarred chest. Then he says, “Can I ask you a couple more questions?”

“I guess.”

“Are you going to keep me here forever?”

The Beast somehow manages to shrug a shoulder. “I haven’t thought about it.”

“Why do you want me here anyway?” Adam tries to keep his voice level. Like this is a negotiation. “I mean, I get it, my friends stole your rose. I don’t think that merits holding someone hostage. But maybe you play by different rules here. Do you really want someone eating your sassafras leaves and learning all your secrets?”

“It would take a lifetime to learn all the secrets of this place,” the Beast says philosophically, looking up at the trees.

Are he and the forest somehow one being?

Then he says, “It doesn’t matter why I want you here.”

“It matters to me,” says Adam. “I had a life, you know.” Not much of one, but—he was only six weeks away from Harvard. Everything was supposed to start over for him there.

“So did I,” said the Beast.

“Does that mean you can’t leave, either?” Adam asks. That puts things in a new light. “And you want to condemn someone else to your fate?”

“I can leave,” says the Beast. “The question is would it be _safe_ for me to leave? I have a person in my life who thinks it wouldn’t, and he’s making me stay here.”

The Beast is obviously waiting for something specific, so Adam takes the bait. “Why aren’t you human anymore?”

The Beast seems to think this over for a minute, which is annoying. Does he know the answer? “There’s more magic in the world than you know,” he says finally. “I have some. So did my father. So did this other person I knew. He wanted something from me that I wouldn’t give, so he cursed me to be like this.”

“If you’re magical, can’t you un-curse yourself?” Adam asks.

“That’s not the kind of magic I can do,” says the Beast. “I don’t know if it’s possible. The people I was talking about who visit me here are working on it.”

Adam reflects on all that and then says, “Okay, I’m going to choose to believe that story—”

The Beast snarls at him.

“—but frankly, I don’t feel sorry for you at all. Just because something bad happened to you doesn’t mean you get to turn around and do the same to someone else. And if you’ve always acted this way, then maybe the other guy was right to curse you. Maybe you aren’t fit for human society.”

“Maybe you’re right,” says the Beast darkly. He stalks off, abruptly ending the conversation.

Adam sighs. _What am I going to do with myself today?_ he asks.

At first, he decides not to wander again today, because the disorientation from the day before had been awful. He walks around in circles where he is. Does some push-ups and jumping jacks just to pass the time.

Then he thinks that he’s going to die of boredom rather than starvation, so he wanders off after all. He thinks he’ll try again to look for the cabin.

He stumbles across the tree he slept by the first night—the one where all this began. He remembers the Beast saying this was the center of his little kingdom. That’s useful information. He needs to mark the tree somehow. For lack of anything else, he rips off part of the hem of his shirt and ties it on a branch. The shirt’s filthy beyond saving anyway.

Then he walks in the direction he remembers going with the little girl, and sure enough, after a while he sees the solid mass of the cabin through the trees. Before he reaches it, he hears voices.

“—can’t stand me,” the Beast is saying.

The little girl replies, “In the other world, it was very slow, remember?”

The Beast sighs. “Opal, you know I can’t remember the other world.”

So the girl’s name is Opal. Adam’s dying to know what “the other world” is.

“Be nice,” says Opal firmly. Then she starts babbling in that not-quite-Latin language.

“English, for god’s sake, kid,” says the Beast.

Opal tells him, “He’s coming.”

Adam figures this means him, so he starts walking again and reaches the little clearing in front of the cabin, where they’re both sitting. Before he’s even gotten there, he’s decided to make some demands.

The Beast looks at him coolly, as if he hadn’t just been bemoaning that someone (possibly Adam) doesn’t like him.

Actually, though, why would he care? And why would he ever think his captive would like him? He must’ve been talking about someone else.

Whatever. Adam fixes him with a stare his mother once called uncanny, and the Beast shrinks a bit. “If you’re really planning to keep me here long term,” says Adam, “you’re going to start feeding me more than once a day. And you’re going to find me something to do so I don’t die of boredom.”

“Anything else, Your Majesty?” says the Beast drily.

“I’m going to start sleeping in the house.” Maybe that was already allowed, considering Opal had showed it to him. “And you’re not going to watch me sleep anymore.”

“Fine,” said the Beast. “You can eat with me, as I _suggested._ ”

“Ordered.”

Opal nudges the Beast, who rolls his eyes but puts on a slightly friendlier tone. “What would help you not die of boredom?”

In the middle of a forest, with no electricity? “Books,” says Adam. “Any books, as many as you can get.”

The Beast smirks. He really is bizarrely human sometimes. “Make me a list,” he says. “I’ll get them.”

So they go into the cabin, and Adam makes a list. Books he knows he’ll need for Harvard—if he still goes—books he’s meant to read for ages but never had time for, and a couple of old favorites.

The Beast looks at the list. “Is that all?” he says in that same dry way.

“Is that too much for you?” Adam asks.

They have a stare-off for a few seconds, then the Beast says, “Give me a couple days. I’ll do what I can.” And then he asks, “What else do you like to do?” in a way that sounds like he actually wants to know.

Adam’s never really had time to figure out what he likes to do. He worked and studied all the time. In his few spare minutes... “I liked to go exploring with my friends. The ones you kidnapped.”

“Exploring for what?” asks the Beast.

It’s not actually very easy to explain. It doesn’t actually make a lot of sense. But slowly, he starts to tell the Beast about Glendower, Gansey’s Welsh king. The Beast listens to him with unwavering attention. Adam can’t remember the last time someone looked at him so intently. He can’t decide if it’s flattering or uncomfortable.

When he finishes, the Beast just says, “Your friend sounds incredibly fucking strange.” Adam’s prepared to be offended, but the Beast adds, “Maybe I should’ve kept him here. Strange people can be entertaining.”

“Are you looking for entertainment? Because I’m really the worst person you could’ve chosen for that.”

“I had my reasons,” says the Beast in an odd, stilted way. “I’m gonna go see about your books.”

Before he leaves, Adam says, “Uh, Beast?” He’s forgotten the Beast’s real name. “Is there anything here I could snack on?”

The Beast is in the doorway and turns back. “I wish you’d call me Ronan. There’s all kinds of shit in the kitchen.”

The Beast—Ronan—keeps his promise and brings almost all the books Adam asked for. He won’t say where these come from, either, but after a few more days, Adam finds out how he’s getting at least some of it.

He’s alone in the cabin. He’s slept there and eaten there for three days now, and it’s a lot more comfortable than outside. He’s starting to get into a routine, almost—three squares a day, reading, taking walks in the forest and trying to avoid the force fields.

He’s also noticed a few things around Ronan’s cabin that need fixing. He’s tinkering with a broken toaster that must be battery-powered, though he hasn’t found the compartment yet. That’s when the door opens, and he jumps, startled, because it isn’t Ronan or Opal.

It’s a man he’s never seen before, dressed in business casual. He’s unreasonably attractive, with dark curls and icy blue eyes that look vaguely familiar. They stare at each other for a moment, until the stranger says, “You must be Adam.” He holds up a bag. “I’ve got books for you.”

Adam stays where he is. Fight or flight isn’t kicking in—he’s frozen instead, until he manages to shuffle into a corner so that at least his back is protected. “Who are you?” he asks. He’d assumed no one could get in and out of here except Ronan. Or people Ronan permitted to leave, like Blue and Gansey.

The man just frowns at him. It’s barely different than the expression he wore before. “I’m Declan.” He steps a bit closer and drops the bag at Adam’s feet. Then he looks Adam up and down, faintly disapproving. “I hope he’s right about you.”

Adam can’t help his curiosity. Better to know as much as he possibly can about his current situation. “Right about me, how?”

“That you can help him.”

It’s clear Declan isn’t going to say more than that, so Adam doesn’t ask. They stare at each other, and Adam’s mind races. How could he possibly help Ronan? Way out here, captive, unwilling, without any possessions of his own? Does Ronan somehow think Adam can help break his curse? Why would he? What ability could Adam possibly have...?

_Oh._

Declan’s still there, so Adam finds his voice again. “Do you think you could bring me one more thing?”

Declan doesn’t say yes or no, just tilts his head like he’s asking a question.

“Tarot cards,” says Adam.

“I’ll see what I can do.” Then he’s gone.

Less than 24 hours later, Ronan slinks into the cabin with something in his mouth. He snarls at Adam, a favorite expression of his. Adam has no idea what it’s about, since they haven’t interacted all day. They’ve been giving each other a wide berth most of the time, though sometimes Ronan will still insist they eat together.

He drops whatever he’s holding at Adam’s feet.

It’s the tarot cards. They have a little slobber on them. “Gross,” says Adam.

“You said it, not me,” says Ronan.

“Will you clean them off, at least?”

Ronan uses a paw to bat them into the kitchen, where he rubs them with a towel. From there, he calls back, “What on earth did you want witch cards for?”

Adam doesn’t know where to start with that. “So, magic is just a fact of life to you, but psychic powers are taking things too far?”

Ronan brings the cards back and gives him the side-eye. “Do you have psychic powers?”

Adam doesn’t say yes or no. He says, “I want to make a deal with you.”

“What’s that?” He sounds skeptical.

“I’ll do whatever I can to help you break your curse. I’ll use these to do it. In exchange, once I’ve done all I can, you let me go.”

Interestingly, Ronan doesn’t shoot him down right away. He considers it for a moment, then says, “Have you got someone to go back to?”

It’s such an unfair question. It hits Adam like a gut-punch. Ronan isn’t the psychic one here. How could he know how alone Adam is in the world? The only reply he can manage is a stiff, “What does that matter?”

“I’m just wondering why you’re so eager to go.” Ronan sits and curls up on the floor almost like a dog, but he doesn’t take his sharp eyes off Adam.

That's such a ridiculous statement that Adam can’t help snorting. “Apart from many other reasons, I value my freedom. Do you really think I want to just sit around in your forest forever, unable to leave, with barely any company or anything to do?”

Ronan pouts. “I’d keep you company if I thought you wanted me to.”

He sounds a bit hurt, but Adam doesn’t have it in him to feel guilty. “It’s nice to have more than one person to talk to.”

“Opal’s around.”

This doesn’t warrant further discussion. “Just tell me yes or no.”

Finally, Ronan looks away and says, “If you break my curse, I’ll free you.”

It isn’t exactly what Adam asked for—he’d asked for freedom for _trying_ —but he’ll take it for now. “I’ll do all I can,” he promises again.

Ronan nods and offers a paw to shake. It’s, again, so doglike that Adam laughs out loud, and Ronan looks almost pleased about it.

The little girl, Opal, seeks him out later that day. She sneaks up on him and scares him a little. She hands him an apple and says, rather cryptically, “He’s happy.”

“Okay,” says Adam. “Thanks for the apple.”

She plucks his book out of his hands, turns it upside down, and says, “I can’t read it.” He turns it over for her. “I still can’t,” she says.

So he spends a few minutes trying to explain letters and numbers to her, writing on some scrap paper he finds in the house, because that’s easier to teach with than the copy of _The Aeneid_ he’d been reading. He succeeds in teaching her how to write her name, and he’s honestly really proud of both of them. After that, she loses interest, but she tells him, “Thank you. If you want to help Kerah, you have to kiss.”

He still doesn’t know who Kerah is, and before he can ask, she goes on. “Your friends keep trying to come into the forest, but they can’t.”

“My friends?” They had promised to come back for him, but he assumed it was a lost cause.

“The ones who came here before,” she confirms. “They’re trying to get you.”

“Can you help them?” he asks.

“Not allowed,” she said.

He thinks about it for a second, then asks, “Do you think you could take a message to them, at least?”

She shrugs, so he writes out a brief explanation of everything that’s happened and tells them not to worry about trying to get to him anymore. He doesn’t blame them for any of it.

As he writes this, Opal is eating the paper she wrote her name on, so he doesn’t have a lot of faith that his message will be delivered, but she takes it with her when she goes, and the next day, she furtively slips it back to him when Ronan isn’t looking. Gansey has written a long-winded response under Adam’s original letter. The gist of it is that he and Blue won’t give up no matter what. Adam should’ve expected that, but it’s still hard to believe anyone cares about him that much.

He spends a few days scrying to try to get to the bottom of Ronan’s problem. Ironically, when he scries, he generally ends up in the same place every time. The same place he is now—the forest. In this dreamscape, the wind in the leaves sounds like whispering voices. He can’t ever quite understand what they’re saying to him. He only catches a few words. _Magi, amare, somniator_. They’re all in Latin except for one, a word he’s never heard before. _Greywaren_. The forest says that word a lot. None of it makes sense to him. Sometimes, though, the forest shows him things. Other versions of himself—younger, more vulnerable; older, colder and more confident; 18 years old and running out of patience with this hopeless situation.

Once, it shows him passionately kissing another boy. He can’t tell anything about the person aside from their obvious masculinity. He isn’t surprised; instead he feels a longing that doesn’t go away when he comes out of the vision, flushed and aroused and glad no one’s around.

It isn’t helping him with Ronan’s problem, so he turns to the cards. Again, they seem to be telling him more about himself than about Ronan. Some of his readings are contradictory. He’ll be going far away, the cards assure him—well, good, maybe he will get out of here eventually—but he’ll also be coming back to the place he left. He doesn’t know why he’d ever come back. For Blue and Gansey? Couldn’t they just come to him?

Finally, he makes Ronan do a reading with him, to try to focus it. “Hold your hand—” Paw? He doesn’t know what to call it—“over the cards, and tell me if any of them feel warm to you.”

Ronan is skeptical and reluctant. “I don’t believe in this shit,” he says. “It goes against my religion.”

“You’re religious?” Adam doesn’t believe it. But then Ronan tells him that when he was human, he went to mass every Sunday at St. Agnes Catholic Church. That hits Adam hard. He’s lived in an apartment above the church for more than a year now. Is it all a coincidence? Gansey doesn’t believe in coincidences. Adam wonders if he ever saw human-Ronan coming or going. He’s curious what human-Ronan would’ve looked like.

But that’s all beside the point. “This is my best shot to help you, okay?” he tells Ronan. “Please behave.”

Ronan shoots him a death glare but holds out his paw and moves it back and forth over the cards. He taps three of them slowly, methodically, like he’s putting on a show. Adam rolls his eyes, but flips the cards over. Immediately, they seem wrong. These cards are familiar, because they’re ones he often pulls for himself. The King of Pentacles—ambition, financial security, all his hopes for the future. The Two of Wands—leaving home, the thing he wants to do most, which his visions have already promised over the last few days. The Magician—creation and desire. He doesn’t know exactly why he always pulls that one, but Blue’s aunts, the psychics, have assured him this is _his_ card.

So he shakes his head. “These are mine, not yours,” he tells Ronan. “Let’s try again.”

Ronan sighs dramatically.

Adam ignores him, takes up the cards, and shuffles them. He spreads them out in a line again, and says, “Focus on yourself this time. There’s a question you want to have answered. Think about it. Hold it in your mind while you choose the cards.”

So Ronan chooses again, not without more sighing.

Adam turns them over. The Lovers, The Ten of Cups, The Five of Swords reversed.

Adam looks them over for a second, parsing the meaning. Then he tells Ronan, “They say you shouldn’t kidnap people.”

Ronan rolls his eyes too. “Don’t bullshit me, come on.”

Adam smiles in spite of himself, and Ronan smiles back, although it’s sharp as always. “These are surprisingly romantic,” Adam says. Not what he expected.

“I can understand _The Lovers_ ,” Ronan says.

“Yeah, that’s partnership, attraction, harmony in relationships. But it can have other meanings too. Like choosing between two opposing things, or creating a system of personal beliefs.”

“I have plenty of beliefs already,” says Ronan, and Adam doesn’t doubt it.

“Sometimes it’s about choosing sacrifice or commitment for the person you love.” He moves on. “You see this one?” He points to The Five of Swords. “It’s upside down. Normally it’s about conflict, but when it’s upside down like this, it’s about forgiveness and reconciliation. Are you fighting with someone?”

Ronan snorts. “Besides you?”

“Maybe it really is saying you should let me go,” Adam says, smiling again. “But more likely it’s someone else in your life—maybe the curse will only break if you forgive someone. Maybe the person who cast the spell?”

“He’s dead,” says Ronan bluntly.

“That doesn’t mean you can’t forgive him,” says Adam. Not that he knows a ton about forgiveness himself. “But since the first one is romantic, this one might be, too. It could be about reconciling with a lover—like, getting back together.”

Ronan grunts. Impossible to know what that means.

“Okay, this last one—” The Ten of Cups. “It’s usually about familial bliss.” Certainly not a card Adam has ever pulled for himself. “Um, stability, fertility—”

Another snort.

“What else? Satisfaction. Peace. Leaving hard times behind. It’s all related to family and love. Does that make any sense to you?”

“It’s my past,” Ronan says, low and gruff.

Adam is surprised but tries to hide it. “Were you thinking about the past when you pulled the card?”

“No.”

“Yeah, I mean, we’re trying to figure out your future here. Maybe this is what you’ll have someday after the curse breaks.” Adam sighs. That sounds nice. Also very difficult to picture for Ronan, even the human version of him. When Ronan doesn’t respond, Adam tries to piece together some conclusion. “These cards definitely suggest that your interpersonal relationships are the key to breaking your curse, so if there’s anyone in your life who you miss or who you need to fix things with, maybe that’s the key.”

“Maybe,” says Ronan, but he doesn’t sound convinced at all.

That annoys Adam. “What else do you want me to say? Clearly I can’t fix this for you—it always had to be you. Only you can break your own curse.”

“I don’t know,” says Ronan, which only makes Adam angrier. Is he really not going to take any responsibility?

But he tamps down the anger and says, “You said the person who cursed you wanted something from you. What was it? Could that have something to do with all this?”

Ronan stares at the floor and slowly says, “He didn’t want love, exactly. Maybe sex. Maybe a relationship? Anyway, he was the last person I would’ve wanted to be with. I’m not sorry I turned him down.”

Now Adam is _really_ shocked. It’s still so hard to picture human Ronan, especially in such a human situation. And does this mean—is he—gay? Or did he turn the guy down _because_ he was a guy?

As if reading his thoughts, Ronan adds, “He was a shithead. He hurt my little brother. He only wanted to be with me because we had the same kind of magical powers.”

“I see,” says Adam. He does, sort of. “Maybe this has nothing to do with him, then. I think it all points to romantic reconciliation. Was there ever anyone else you were in love with?”

Ronan looks up at him and then quickly away.

“You don’t have to tell me,” says Adam, although he can’t pretend it’s none of his business when his whole future depends on it. “Just think about it.”

Adam’s barely awake the next morning when he hears raised voices. He peeks out of his room carefully and sees Declan, who appears to have brought groceries this time. He and Ronan are arguing. Adam isn’t surprised, despite not knowing anything about their relationship. Ronan is abrasive, to say the least.

But there’s a third person too, a young man with blond curls who sees him watching and smiles. “Please, guys,” he says to the other two. “Play nice? We have company.”

Ronan turns and gives him an almost guilty look; Declan shoots him the kind of dismissive glance Adam’s very accustomed to receiving. He hates that.

But the blond boy comes towards him looking friendly. “Are you Adam? I’m Matthew. Come look what I brought.”

Adam edges out of his room cautiously and trades a wary look with Declan.

Matthew bounces over and hands him a Game Boy. It looks vintage. Matthew says, “So you’ll have something else to do here. When it runs out of charge, I’ll take it back and charge it for you.”

In some ways this just feels like another layer of weird added to his weird situation, but if he takes it at face value, it’s a different kind of entertainment, and he’s still sorely lacking for that. “Thanks,” he says, “that’s very thoughtful.”

Matthew beams at him. Adam is a little charmed.

Then Declan says stiffly, “The situation here, we realize, is less than ideal for you, but we’d like you to be comfortable, at least. Is there anything else you want?”

Which is when it sinks in that even Friendly Matthew is an accomplice to his imprisonment. His mood sours immediately. “Who are you?” he asks. Are they all working for some crime syndicate or something?

Declan and Matthew both look surprised. Matthew says, “We’re Ronan’s brothers. Didn’t he tell you?”

 _Brothers._ That seems like too normal a thing for Ronan to have.

“I didn’t,” says Ronan.

“We’re going to have a picnic in the woods!” Matthew says, like he’s Little Red Riding Hood or something. “Come with us!”

Adam goes, because obviously he has nothing else to do. Matthew has a picnic basket, maybe the same one the raven had had previously. He spreads out a blanket and unpacks sandwiches, potato salad, and drinks. It’s a nice day, sunny and warm but with a breeze. They sit and eat and listen to Matthew chatter about school—he can’t focus in his classes, they’re boring, but the teachers are nice—and his friends—they do a lot of dumb tricks at the skate park, apparently, and Declan doesn’t approve.

“Declan doesn’t approve of anything fun,” Ronan notes. He’s listening to his brother with the same focused attention he sometimes uses with Adam. It’s odd—a completely different side to him.

After they’ve eaten, Matthew and Ronan get up and start playing frisbee, and again, it’s ridiculous how much Ronan just seems like someone’s dog. Eventually the frisbee game devolves into them just chasing each other, and Matthew howls with laughter like a little kid, while Ronan howls back like a wolf.

After a while, Opal shows up and coaxes Ronan away for a bit—she says, _problem with the creatures,_ whatever that means.

Once he’s sure Ronan is out of earshot, he just comes out and says it. “You two do understand that your brother is like, magically keeping me prisoner here?”

Declan gives him an absolutely unreadable look. Matthew, who has sat back down, looks stricken. Adam turns to him specifically and says, “You seem like such a nice person—” Adam knows terribly well that looks are deceiving, but he wants to make them feel as guilty as possible—“are you really okay with him doing that?”

Matthew looks like he might actually cry about it. “We love him so much.” Declan looks sour about that but doesn’t disagree. “Literally, what I want more than anything in the world is for his curse to be broken. He really thinks you can help him.”

It’s so bizarre and frustrating—why on earth would Adam be able to fix this? Why are they so insistent on it?

He says, a little bitterly, “You two must be very close.”

Matthew says, “He’s an amazing brother, really. He isn’t a bad person, he’s just lonely and angry. I think he’s afraid he’ll be like this forever.”

Adam has very little sympathy. “How long has he been this way?”

“Two years,” says Matthew.

Adam knows he’s not getting anywhere and decides to be done with this conversation, but then Declan speaks up. “Ronan is magical. You know that, obviously. Our family is accustomed to having to do less-than-ethical things to hide the magic from people who would exploit us or cause us harm. I don’t know if you’re a danger to Ronan—”

Adam snorts.

“—but this is another case in which we have to play outside the normal rules, because there’s nothing normal about magic.”

Adam is so pissed—his voice comes out cold as ice. “Are you trying to tell me it’s okay that he kidnapped me because he’s magical? Is that what I’m hearing?”

Declan says, “If he keeps you here for more than, say, six months, and you haven’t been able to help him, I’ll make sure he lets you go.”

Adam’s first thought is, _six fucking months?_ It seems like forever, and it’s so unfair that he should lose that much of his life through no fault of his own. Especially now, with college so close.

But it’s better than staying here forever. “Do you promise?” he asks.

“You have my word,” says Declan.

Adam’s sitting silently and stewing in his discontent when Ronan and Opal come back. The two of them end up in a wrestling match with Matthew. He notices how gentle Ronan is with them, though. He could hurt them badly—he’s careful not to land on them heavily, and he keeps his claws sheathed and his mouth closed.

 _What are you?_ Adam wonders. And it’s not about his animal form. Ronan is endlessly confusing to him.

That night, Ronan whips out a matching vintage Game Boy and challenges him to a battle.

 _“How?”_ Adam asks. “How could you possibly play video games with your paws?” They’re sitting on the cabin floor facing each other. The floor is cooler than the rest of the house, but it’s also rough and oddly springy—Adam doesn’t know if he’s more worried about splinters or total collapse.

“My Game Boy’s specially designed for me so I can,” says Ronan.

And how is _that_ possible? Do they just have obscene amounts of money?

Adam’s in such a bad mood that he says no four times, until Ronan’s begging and dancing circles around him wears him down. “What kind of battle?” Adam asks.

“Tetris,” says Ronan.

Adam is so not impressed. “Are you kidding me? Tetris? That’s the best we can do?”

“It’s the only game I have two copies of,” says Ronan.

Adam weighs it: pro, having something to do. Con: having to do it with Ronan, who pisses him off. The pro wins out. “Fine,” he says. “Don’t be disappointed if I’m terrible. I only ever played it once in an arcade when I was like, eight.”

But Adam’s brain is logical and mathematical, good at picking out patterns and solving problems without even thinking too hard. Turns out, he is _fantastic_ at Tetris. He beats Ronan in their first game, and Ronan doesn’t really seem to mind, but he says, “Best out of three. Winner takes all.”

“All of what?”

“All the leftover potato salad.”

“You’re on,” Adam says.

He wins round two as well, pretty easily, despite Ronan trying to distract him with various nonsense like singing and swearing (which honestly sounds kind of musical when Ronan does it). He only succeeds in making Adam laugh.

“Just give it up,” he says when it’s over. “I’m better than you at this.”

“How are you better?” Ronan asks. “There’s no strategy to this game.”

“That’s exactly it. No strategy. Don’t think, just do. Act fast.” Adam lies back on the floor and laughs again. He’s tired and a little loopy. Ronan flops down beside him. Adam says, “Next time, tell your brothers to bring us two copies of Pac-Man. Vintage game battles continued.”

“Oh, I’d for sure beat you at Pac-Man,” says Ronan confidently.

“I’d _love_ to see that, honestly.”

Ronan looks at him upside down and pouts a bit, literally making puppy-dog eyes. “Do you hate me less now?”

Adam looks away. What an uncomfortable question. It’s strange though—“I can’t really seem to hate you.”

Ronan sighs—whether it’s happy or sad, Adam isn’t sure.

Another few days pass. Nothing changes. Despite the watch Opal gave him, Adam’s lost track of how long he’s been here, and he’s starting to feel hopeless again. He won’t break Ronan’s curse. He doesn’t trust Declan’s word. _If_ he ever gets out of here, it’ll only be because of the tentative friendship he’s formed with Ronan over the past few days—more Tetris battles and baking disasters and Latin competitions, because they both learned it in school.

One afternoon, he’s wandering around the woods, longer and farther than he’s gone before, trying not to think about his ruined future. He walks just far enough in each direction to reach the force field but not hit it. It’s like a game. How far can he go and not get hurt?

But then he comes to a place he’s never seen before, even though it’s clearly part of Ronan’s realm. It’s a line of trees that look a bit like weeping willows. There’s so many of them that whatever lies beyond is impossible to see.

Adam is a cautious creature, but he’s still intrigued, so he steps through the willow-line.

And instantly regrets it.

Before him is some kind of nightmare scene—every tree in sight has been ripped out by the roots, and it’s obvious who did it. He hears the monster before he sees it. It’s screaming. It manages to sound human and birdlike at the same time.

It has already heard him too, and when it emerges from behind one of the dead trees, it’s already running for him.

He runs too, only for the willows to act like another force field, throwing him backwards. He rolls a few feet and then immediately springs back onto his feet, ignoring the pain from the fall. He sprints off in another direction. The monster follows.

He only got the briefest look at it. It looked like a bird, sort of, but a mutated one. Two beaks, two sets of eyes. It was as tall as an ostrich. It was a sickly yellow color and had long claws that looked like they could rip Adam in two.

He’s a reasonably fast runner, but he hears the bird-monster gaining ground on him. And then, out of nowhere, there’s a roar like a lion’s. _Oh god,_ he thinks, _another one. I’m dead_.

He had never imagined it ending quite like this...

But nothing catches up with him. He hears tussling behind him and keeps running, but then the bird noises stop, and he looks back, though he hasn’t stopped moving.

The bird-creature is on the ground, motionless, and Ronan is standing over it, victorious—but also bleeding and swaying a bit. Adam goes back and reaches him just as he collapses.

Ronan isn’t completely unconscious, so with Adam’s help, he makes it back to the cabin after much stopping and starting. He says there’s a First Aid kit in one of the kitchen cabinets, because of course there is. The cabin is incredibly well-stocked. They sit on the floor and Adam patches him up best he can. “Does human antibiotic ointment work on you?” he asks.

“Wouldn’t it work on anything? Bacteria isn’t different just because it’s on an animal.”

“I guess...”

The bird-creature scratched Ronan up badly—he’s got gashes on his arms and face, and he twisted an ankle. Adam feels lucky to only be bruised from falling.

“What was that thing?” Adam asks.

“A night horror,” says Ronan.

Adam’s had enough enigmas to last him a lifetime. “Oh, of course. Night horrors. Everyone knows about them.”

Ronan half-smiles, half-glares. Adam ignores it. He finishes tying a bandage and says, “All right, that’ll have to do.”

Ronan just sits where he is, pouting—Adam doesn’t know why and has no interest in trying to read minds beyond the scope of his psychic powers. He gets up, washes his hands, and puts the First Aid kit away. He turns back, and Ronan’s still just sitting there.

“I have nightmares,” he says, apropos of nothing.

Adam leans against the kitchen counter. “So does everyone.”

“Mine are different,” says Ronan. “Mine can come to life.”

Adam’s usual skepticism fails him. Anything seems possible now. “How’s that?”

"I can take things out of my dreams.”

Adam processes that slowly. “So you... bring your nightmares into the real world?”

Ronan scowls. “Not on purpose.”

“So you can’t control it?”

He scuffs the ground with his paw. “Sometimes I can. When the dreams are good. When they aren’t, anything can happen. So the night horror—the bird—it’s one of my nightmares. But Chainsaw and Opal are my creations, too. They came from better dreams.” He pauses, considering his next words. “So did Matthew.”

Now that _does_ shock him.

Before he’s absorbed that, Ronan adds, “And the forest. This part of it—my part. That’s why I always say it’s mine. Like, yeah, your pygmy friend was right, we’re technically in a state park, but I created this part of it. Or I manifested it. I think it existed somewhere else first.”

Adam’s at a complete loss for words. He gapes. When he finally speaks, what comes out is, “So when you said you were a _person_ before, you meant—what, a wizard?”

Ronan rolls his eyes. “No. Just a human with this one weird power. My dad had it too. And so did the guy who cursed me, but apparently he could do other things that I can’t. I can’t turn people into wolves or whatever the fuck.”

“Okay,” says Adam, “okay.”

“You believe me?”

Adam shrugs. “Why wouldn’t I? There’s no scientific explanation for any of this. Nothing I ever learned explains it—not even my psychic powers.”

Ronan looks at him unwaveringly. “But you already knew there was magic in the world.”

“Yes.”

“That’s why you didn’t flip your shit the first time you saw me.”

“Honestly, I thought I was dreaming.”

Ronan grins. “So your dreams are fucked up, too?”

They are, a particular brand of fucked-up.

Adam comes back to another question he’d meant to ask. “If you can kill your night horrors, why didn’t you before?”

Just like that, Ronan’s pissed again. “Oh, right, because it was _so_ easy. I leave them in that part of the forest. They can’t get out of there. If you hadn’t gone where I told you not to go, none of this would have happened!”

“When did you tell me--?”

“The first day! I said don’t walk east from the center of my territory!”

“Oh, right, because I’m Lewis and Clark,” Adam snaps. “Because I carry a compass and always know my cardinal directions!”

Ronan looks like he wants to smile, but he storms out of the cabin instead. They don’t speak for the rest of the night.

The next day, Ronan appears out of nowhere while Adam is on another one of his walks. Without greeting, he says, “Why do you want to go? Tell me one specific reason.”

Adam is instantly angry. “‘I want my freedom back’ is a specific reason.”

“But there’s something else you want,” Ronan insists. “Is it a person? A place? A thing?”

Adam wants five million things. He doesn’t owe Ronan an answer, but this is an easy question. “I want to go to college. I was supposed to be leaving at the end of the summer.”

Ronan looks slightly taken aback, then says, “That’s why all you wanted was books?”

Adam shrugs. “That’s one reason.”

“What’s so great about college?”

His anger mounts. “I don’t know what kind of life you lived before this—” based on his impression of Ronan’s brothers, he suspects it was a privileged one—“but for some of us, college is a way to make our lives better. To become something more. And for me, it’s a chance to go somewhere new, instead of staying in a town that holds mostly bad memories for me.” Ronan actually looks a little sorry, but he doesn’t say it, of course. “Where were you going?” he asks.

“Harvard,” he says. It wasn’t his first choice, but he’s still incredibly proud of it.

Ronan gapes. “Fucking Harvard?” He considers it for a moment, “I should’ve known. You’re the smartest fucking person I’ve ever met.”

“Uh. Thanks.” Adam is surprised to get a compliment out of Ronan, and surprised Ronan has any opinion about his intelligence.

They part ways. Adam doesn’t understand the significance of the conversation until that night, when—again out of the blue—Ronan says, “You should leave.”

Adam thinks he means the cabin and looks around blankly. “Why?”

“Harvard,” says Ronan, and everything falls into place.

“You mean you’re going to let me go?” It’s so shocking that he doesn’t allow himself to feel hopeful.

“Yeah,” says Ronan. He won’t make eye contact. “You aren’t going to break the curse. My night horror could’ve killed you. You don’t belong here, and you should go to Harvard.”

This is extremely considerate from someone who’s been holding him prisoner for weeks. Adam just says, “Thank you.”

“I’ll put down the barriers in the morning.”

That’s the end of the conversation.

In the morning, Ronan is nowhere to be found, but there’s a note that says, _the barriers are down. You can go._

He has no idea how Ronan managed to write it, and even after a couple more lessons, Opal’s writing isn’t that advanced. After he’s looked at it for a minute, he realizes it must be a dream thing.

Opal isn’t around either—he would’ve liked to say goodbye to her. To either of them.

He hates to leave his books behind, but he has no way of carrying them.

He walks back out of the forest the way he walked in. No force field blocks his path. He reaches the road without incident and hitches a ride back to Henrietta, just like he’d imagined doing days ago.

He goes to Monmouth first. Gansey nearly falls over when he sees Adam at the door. He calls Blue, who comes over immediately. They talk over themselves explaining all the ways they’d tried to rescue him. “We only stopped when my mom told us you would be able to free yourself,” Blue says.

“I didn’t really,” says Adam. “He just let me go eventually.”

They want to know all about what happened, but Adam doesn’t really know what to say. The whole thing was so strange, and yet most of it had been uneventful.

Gansey asks, “Why did he keep you instead of us? I felt so guilty about it.”

“He’s cursed,” Adam says. “He thought I’d be able to help him break it, but I couldn’t, and I guess that’s why he let me go.”

They keep asking questions, and he keeps giving short answers until they finally seem to realize he doesn’t want to talk about it.

They don’t mention it again.

Adam had, of course, lost all track of time while he was in the forest, and he comes home to realize nearly a month has passed. Gansey and Blue had apparently reported him missing to the police, partially so they’d send search parties out for him in the forest—but of course they never got past Ronan’s defenses—and partially so Adam wouldn’t lose all his part-time jobs. In fact, Boyd is downright thrilled to see him when he goes back to the garage. “We were worried,” says Boyd. “Thought you might’ve fallen off a cliff or something. What happened to you?”

“I just got really lost,” says Adam. It isn’t a believable story, but it’s the best he can do.

The summer is waning, and the next few weeks fly by. He’s days away from leaving for Harvard when he hears it on the radio—the local talk show Boyd always plays in the garage. This show does local news, too, and they’re talking about a wildfire in the mountains outside of town. When they start describing the specific location, Adam pauses in his work, shocked. _The western edge of Mountain Vista State Park,_ the newscaster says.

Adam thinks, _Ronan. Opal_.

The talk show hosts move on to other things, but later, they cycle back around to the wildfire. They say it’s spreading out of control.

Adam’s shift is almost over. When he clocks out, he gets in his car and races for the mountains. He isn’t really sure why he’s doing it—he won’t be able to save them. But if he’s ahead of the fire, he can get them out of there.

The farther up into the mountains he goes, the smokier the air gets. Eventually, it’s hard to see, but he picks out a place that he thinks is where he stopped his car the first time, when he came to rescue Blue and Gansey. He gets out, and immediately his eyes are stinging from the smoke. He doesn’t see or hear flames, and it’s no hotter than usual for late summer in Virginia. Still, he hesitates. Is he really going to walk into a burning forest?

Yes, he is. Why else had he come all this way?

He hurries. He walks straight in the way he had the first day, and after a while reaches the tree at the center of Ronan’s territory. It’s still marked by a strip of Adam’s t-shirt. From there, he turns left and heads in the direction of the cabin. The air is clearer here—hopefully that means he’s getting farther from the fire.

He picks up his pace when he sees the cabin in the distance. He doesn’t knock, just barrels in. But the cabin is empty.

...At first glance. He peeks into the bedrooms, and in one corner, behind the bed, he sees one of Ronan’s paws. “Ronan? Are you awake?”

Immediately, the paw moves. Ronan comes out and stares at him, mouth hanging open, which could be human shock or dog panting. Hard to say.

“Adam?” he says. “The fuck are you doing here?” He sounds... almost happy. It’s so hard to tell.

“I came to warn you,” Adam says. “There’s a forest fire, and it’s headed this way. You and Opal need to get out of here. And any of your other dream creatures, if they’re around.”

Ronan says, “You came all the way up from Henrietta to tell me that?”

Adam is slightly annoyed. “What, would you have preferred I let you die?”

“No,” says Ronan. “But look, Opal’s out back. Why don’t you grab her and just get out of here before _you_ die?”

“What about you?”

Ronan looks away. “I’m going to be cursed forever. Maybe dying in a forest fire is the best I can hope for.”

Adam hadn’t really expected to be met with resistance. “I’m not going to just leave you here,” he says, exasperated. “Surely there’s still hope.”

Ronan doesn’t look distraught or desperate. He doesn’t look content, either. “Look, I’ve always known how to end the fucking curse, okay? But I can’t do it by myself, and I don’t think the person who could help me even exists. If you can’t, no one can.”

Adam’s getting irritated. Ronan often seems to have this effect on him. “We don’t have a lot of time here, Ronan. Please just come with me.”

Ronan doesn’t budge, doesn’t say anything else.

“I’ll try again to help you, okay? Just come on.”

“You can’t,” Ronan repeats.

“Well, what is it, then? What breaks the curse? If you’ve always known.” Adam could swear it’s getting hotter in here. He’s not going to die for Ronan’s sake. Hopefully _that’s_ not what would break the curse.

“Love,” says Ronan.

This makes no sense. Anything to do with love is usually confusing to Adam. “What? Love? But Matthew loves you. So does Opal.”

“Romantic love,” Ronan specifies. “Someone has to fall in love with me even though I’m abrasive and shitty and disguised as a wolf. That’s how K—the other dreamer—decided to get even with me.”

That’s a lot to take in. “Okay, so this K person was a douche. Doesn’t mean you’ll never find love.”

“I’m repulsive,” says Ronan.

Adam is belatedly understanding the implication here—that Ronan hoped Adam would fall in love with him.

Does Ronan think he’s in love with Adam? He couldn’t possibly be... Could he?

Either way, they’re running out of time. _“I_ don’t find you repulsive,” Adam tells him. “Look.” He walks over, leans down, and kisses Ronan on his doggy nose. “There, see? Will you come with me now?”

Ronan comes. They grab Opal and run back to the road, Chainsaw following overhead. By the time they reach Adam’s car, it’s clear the fire is getting close. Adam races back down the mountain with a satyr, a raven, and an almost-wolf in his backseat. And they make it out.

Back in the valley, Ronan gives directions to a farm a little bit outside of town. Adam drops them off there. When Ronan climbs out of the car, he looks Adam in the eye and says, “Thanks for saving me. Just forget about the other thing.”

That’s the end of it, but Adam knows he’s not going to forget anything.

**Epilogue**

Harvard isn’t quite what he expected it to be. Maybe he’d never really had any expectations—going there had seemed like a dream, not something that would ever actually happen.

He loves his classes—they’re kicking his ass, but the challenge thrills and energizes him.

The other students seem so young and cheerful, like they come from a completely different world than Adam. There are a few exceptions—he meets most of his friends when he stumbles upon them crying over a test score or homesickness and stops to try to help. He hadn’t really known he had this side to him.

Hardly any of the friends he makes there are straight and cis. They talk about these things so openly and casually, and it’s like he’s in a completely different world from the one he grew up in, where these things couldn’t be discussed. It makes him feel more comfortable with himself.

And honestly—it makes him think about Ronan, who had trusted Adam so easily with that part of himself. Who had told him everything, in the end.

Or almost everything. Adam still wasn’t sure exactly how Ronan felt about him.

Even with this new self-confidence and all the new people he’s meeting, Adam doesn’t date anyone at Harvard for the first couple of months. He has fleeting moments of interest, when he sees a pair of pretty eyes or hears a brilliant argument in class or laughs at someone’s joke. It never turns in to serious interest.

But one day, he’s sitting outside the student union reading. It’s early October, and the weather is gorgeous—clear blue skies and a little chill in the air. Campus smells a little earthier than usual, and it reminds him of being in the forest. He can’t bear to go inside.

And it’s just as well, because amid all the students coming and going from the union and other buildings, he catches sight of possibly the most attractive man he’s ever seen.

The guy stands out. He doesn’t look like other, perfectly-put-together Harvard kids. He’s wearing all black, including a leather jacket that looks like it was made just for him. He’s pale, with dark hair shaved close to the scalp. Adam can tell even from a distance that his eyes are an icy blue. There’s a sharpness to him, and a wariness, and he reminds Adam of someone—but who?

He’s looking around like he doesn’t know where to go, and if they were closer to each other, Adam would use that as an opening to talk to him. _Hey, are you lost? Do you need directions? I’ll walk you over there..._

Maybe it’s for the best that they aren’t. The guy looks like he could eat Adam alive.

But then he turns, and their eyes meet. The guy’s expression shifts—the wariness and confusion replaced by something a little more focused and... hopeful?

He’s looking at Adam the way Adam must be looking at him, as something to be appreciated.

And he’s coming over...

Adam panics a little, looks back down at his book and pretends to be absorbed in it. He doesn’t realize the guy is right in front of him until he hears his name. “Adam?”

They’re face to face, and Adam is startled. “Umm, yes. Do I know you?” He’s sure he doesn’t.

But the guy smiles, and it’s surprisingly soft on such a sharp face. “Yeah.” He holds out a hand to shake. “I’m Ronan.”

Adam is stunned. He shakes hands as an automatic reflex and keeps gaping at the man in front of him. Could it really be...?

It’s the eyes that convince him. They haven’t changed at all.

“It is you,” he says in wonder.

“Yup,” says Ronan. He sounds a lot more cheerful than usual. He sits down at Adam’s table.

Adam is at a loss for words. “But how—how did you--?”

“Break the curse?”

Adam nods.

Ronan gives him another smile. “You did it, I guess. I woke up the next morning—after the fire—and I was back to normal.”

Adam tries to replay that day in his mind. “What—just from saying I didn’t find you repulsive? Or was it because I saved you from the fire?”

Ronan shrugs, but it’s missing his usual snark and ennui. “I don’t know why, and I don’t really care. I’m just glad to be myself again. And I’m here because...” He falters a bit. “Well, to see you, obviously.”

Now Adam smiles back. “All this way, just to see me?”

“It isn’t _just,_ ” says Ronan, with a hint of his typical edge. “You saved me and uncursed me, somehow, so I’m here to say thanks. But also...” He trails off and looks away. He taps his fingers on the table, a little nervous.

What would he have to be nervous about? Is he here to ask for something? A favor? “Do you need something?”

Ronan turns those bright, pale eyes on Adam again, and Adam is slightly speechless. He’s so beautiful, it’s ridiculous. “No,” says Ronan. “Well, kind of. I need you to go on a date with me.”

Now Adam is fully speechless.

Ronan adds, “But like, you don’t have to. I won’t die or anything.”

Adam manages, “What... why? Because I broke the curse?”

Ronan looks him right in the eye and says, “Because I like you. Because I knew it’d be you as soon as I saw you.”

And once again... No words.

They stare at each other. After a minute, Ronan sighs. “I’ll get going—”

Adam grabs his hand, fast. “Wait, no. Hold on. You knew it would be me?”

Another shrug. “There was just something about you. I prayed for it... Just, _please._ ”

It’s too much. Adam has never seen himself as the savior type, and he can’t imagine anyone looking at him and wanting him like that, right away.

But in the end, it’s no stranger than Gansey’s king or Blue’s family or Ronan’s dreams or the curse itself.

Finally he says, “And all you want is a date?”

Ronan smiles. “And a real kiss.”

That’s an easy wish to grant.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope the ending is satisfying! I think this is SO LONG because I was trying to figure out how Adam Parrish could ever even like someone who held him prisoner. The love will come later. :)


End file.
